Welfare for refugees cost taxpayers nearly $100 billion: Report

(National Sentinel) Costly: Though Democrats often do, no one can reasonably call Americans unkind or stingy when it comes to caring for those who are less fortunate than we are, and a new report backs that claim to the hilt.

Americans spent nearly $100 billion in taxpayer funds to care for about 606,000 refugees in the decade leading up to 2014, mostly via our health and welfare systems, according to a study by the State Department.

The $96.6 billion cost rises to $126 billion when officials count the extra cost of paying for the refugees’ spouses and children, including U.S.-born children.

The $126 billion bill is just for programs managed by the Department of Health and Human Services. It excludes additional taxpayers’ spending via state programs, as well as federal spending on Social Security, education, and housing programs, plus tax credits, says the State Department’s annual report to Congress on the refugee program.

The one-agency, $126-billion firehose of cash, however, was a huge taxpayer subsidy to the refugee groups which delivered the refugee to cities and towns. It is also a huge subsidy to the low-wage employers who hired the refugees in place of higher-wage Americans, and to the grocery stores and apartments who sold food and rented apartments to the new arrivals.

What’s more, the spending levels will remain high because the vast majority of the 606,000 refugees remain legally inside the U.S.

This could be one reason why the Trump administration has dramatically cut the number of refugees the United States will accept. Fox Newsreported last week:

The Trump administration announced Monday it will cut the maximum number of refugees allowed into the country next year to 30,000, citing national security concerns and the need to restore integrity to the system.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said that the administration is lowering the refugee cap from 45,000 in fiscal 2018 to 30,000 in fiscal 2019. It will be the lowest ceiling since the refugee program began in 1980.

Former President Barack Obama raised the ceiling to 110,000 in 2017, and the U.S. allowed in almost 85,000 refugees in 2016 — the last full year of the Obama administration. But the Trump administration has taken a much tougher line on immigration and refugee entry, focusing on the need to fully vet those coming into the U.S.

Democrats define “compassion” by the amount of tax money they can extract from us and redistribute to others.

In any event, the fact is all of this compassion is not a zero-sum game; it comes with a hefty price tag at a time when many of our own people — veterans and children included — are doing without.